Researchers find optimal way to pay off student loans

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER

Research News

 

After graduating or leaving college, many students face a difficult choice: Try to pay off their student loans as fast as possible to save on interest, or enroll in an income-based repayment plan, which offers affordable payments based on their income and forgives any balance remaining after 20 or 25 years.

There are pros and cons to each option, and trying to discern the better path can be daunting. That's why University of Colorado Boulder's Yu-Jui Huang and Saeed Khalili, a former graduate student in financial mathematics, along with Dublin City University's Paolo Guasoni, decided to throw a little mathematical muscle at the problem.

The researchers developed a novel mathematical model for determining the optimal student loan repayment strategy, based on an individual borrower's specific circumstances. In April, they published a paper outlining their approach in the SIAM Journal on Financial Mathematics.

Instead of choosing one of these distinct options and sticking with it, some borrowers should consider combining the two to create their own hybrid repayment strategy, the researchers found.

"The rule of thumb is that if your balance is really small, just pay it as quickly as possible, and if your balance is large, then enroll in an income-based scheme right away," said Huang, a CU Boulder assistant professor of applied mathematics who specializes in mathematical finance and applied probability.

"We find that, between these two extremes, there's actually a third strategy, which is, you should pay as much as possible over the first several years. And after that, switch to an income-based repayment scheme."

The model incorporates basic, fundamental mathematics, Huang said, but is likely the first of its kind for student loans. Past studies were mostly empirical, estimating the actual effects of student loans on the economy and on individual borrowers. Very little research has been conducted through the lens of mathematics on the best strategy a student borrower should employ, he said.

The researchers saw an opportunity to contribute to the academic literature while at the same time helping borrowers make savvy repayment decisions. Student loans now total roughly $1.7 trillion and affect nearly 45 million borrowers in the United States, hampering their ability to buy homes, start businesses and attend graduate school.

"We made the model as simple as possible," Huang said. "For many students, this can save them money."

The model takes into account the fact that borrowers have to pay income tax on any loan amount that's forgiven under an income-based repayment plan, as well as the compounding interest rates of various student loans. It helps borrowers determine when they should stop making regular payments and switch to an income-based repayment scheme, a point in time called the critical horizon.

"The critical horizon is the time at which the benefits of forgiveness match the costs of compounding," the researchers write.

Already, the researchers are considering ways to improve their model. For one, they hope to incorporate more randomness into the model, which right now asks borrowers to take their best guess at their future income level, tax rate and living expenses. They also want to consider lifestyle changes that may affect borrowers' motivation for paying off student loans, such as getting married, buying a house and having children.

"In practice, what people say is, 'Yes, I'm going to be a dentist. Looking at past data, I know my starting salary should be this and, after a few years, my salary should grow to this particular stage and so on,'" Huang said. "The purpose of introducing the randomness here is because some dentists become really rich in five or 10 years, and some others are not so rich. Even if you look at the data, you can't be quite sure which category you will eventually fall into."

Though the researchers have no plans themselves to turn their formula into some sort of widely accessible calculator, they're open to existing student loan repayment calculators adopting their model so that I can help as many borrowers as possible.

"Right now, students don't really have any kind of concrete or rigorous guidelines--they may just have these general impressions but there's no math to justify those," Huang said. "We have created a simple model, but one that's undergone a very rigorous mathematical treatment."

 

Undiagnosed and untreated disease identified in rural South Africa

A comprehensive health-screening program in rural northern KwaZulu-Natal has found a high burden of undiagnosed or poorly controlled non-communicable diseases

UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM

Research News

 

IMAGE: EMILY WONG, M.D. view more 

CREDIT: AFRICA HEALTH RESEARCH INSTITUTE

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - A comprehensive health-screening program in rural northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, has found a high burden of undiagnosed or poorly controlled non-communicable diseases, according to a study published in The Lancet Global Health.

Researchers found that four out of five women over the age of 30 were living with a chronic health condition, and that the HIV-negative population and older people -- especially those over 50 -- bore the higher burden of undiagnosed or poorly controlled non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and hypertension.

The study was co-led by Emily Wong, M.D., a resident faculty member at the Africa Health Research Institute, or AHRI, in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Wong is also an assistant professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases, University of Alabama at Birmingham Department of Medicine and an associate scientist in the UAB Center for AIDS Research.

"The data will give AHRI researchers and the Department of Health critical indicators for where the most urgent interventions are needed," Wong said. "The research was done before COVID-19, but it has highlighted the urgency of diagnosing and treating people with non-communicable diseases -- given that people with uncontrolled diabetes and hypertension are at higher risk of getting very ill with COVID."

Durban lies in the worldwide epicenter for HIV-associated tuberculosis infections. Wong works there to understand the impact of HIV infection -- the virus that causes AIDS -- on tuberculosis pathogenesis, immunity and epidemiology. She collaborates closely with another UAB researcher who also works at AHRI, Andries "Adrie" Steyn, Ph.D., professor in the UAB Department of Microbiology.

"We are working hard to strengthen ties and collaborations between the two institutions and create a UAB-AHRI Tuberculosis Center that further facilitates multi-disciplinary collaborations," Wong said. Wong joined UAB last year, and she will spend about 80 percent of her time at AHRI and 20 percent at UAB when travel resumes from its COVID-19 hiatus.

As background to the study, 15 years of intense public health efforts that increased access to anti-retroviral therapy in sub-Saharan Africa has beneficially decreased mortality from AIDS and increased life expectancy. As a result, there is an increasing priority to address other causes of disease, including tuberculosis and non-communicable diseases.

In the 18-month Lancet Global Health study, health workers screened 17,118 people age 15 years and older via mobile camps within 1 kilometer of each participant's home in the uMkhanyakude district. They found high and overlapping burdens of HIV, tuberculosis, diabetes and hypertension among men and women.

While the HIV cases were, for the most part, well diagnosed and treated, some demographic groups, including men in their 20s and 30s, still had high rates of undiagnosed and untreated HIV. The majority of people with tuberculosis, diabetes or hypertension were either undiagnosed or not well controlled. Tuberculosis remains one of the leading causes of death in South Africa, and the high rates of undiagnosed and asymptomatic tuberculosis that health workers found is a concern.

"Our findings suggest that the massive efforts of the past 15 years to test and treat for HIV have done very well for that one disease," Wong said. "But in that process, we may have neglected some of the other important diseases that are highly prevalent."

The mobile camps screened for diabetes, high blood pressure, nutritional status (obesity and malnutrition), and tobacco and alcohol use, as well as HIV and tuberculosis. The tuberculosis screening component included high-quality digital chest X-rays and sputum tests for people who reported symptoms or had abnormal X-rays. Clinical information was layered onto 20 years of population data from AHRI's health and demographic surveillance research. Through a sophisticated data system and the use of artificial intelligence to interpret the chest X-rays, AHRI's clinical team examined the information in real time and referred people to the public health system as needed.

Researchers found that:

• Half of the people 15 years or older had at least one active disease, and 12 percent had two or more diseases. The incidences of diabetes and high blood pressure were 8.5 percent and 23 percent, respectively.
• One-third of the people were living with HIV, but this was mostly well diagnosed and treated. Women bore a particularly high burden of HIV, high blood pressure and diabetes.
• For tuberculosis, 1.4 percent of the people had active disease, and 22 percent had lifetime disease. About 80 percent of the undiagnosed tuberculosis was asymptomatic, and men had higher rates of active tuberculosis.

Researchers also identified several disease patterns by geographical location -- for example, the highest burden of HIV was seen near main roads, while higher rates of tuberculosis and non-communicable diseases were seen in more remote areas.

###

Wong is corresponding author of the study "Convergence of infectious and non-communicable disease epidemics in rural South Africa: a cross-sectional, population-based multimorbidity study," and there are 30 co-authors.

Support came from Wellcome Trust grant 201433/Z/16/Z, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant OPP1175182, the South African Department of Science and Innovation, the South African Medical Research Council, and the South African Population Research Infrastructure Network. Support also came from National Institutes of Health grants AI118538 and TW011687, the United Kingdom Medical Research Council, the United Kingdom Department for International Development, the South African Research Chairs Initiative, the Victor Daitz Foundation, and the Sub-Saharan African Network for Tuberculosis and HIV Research.

PRACTICAL SCIENCE

Team describes science-based hiccups intervention

Users reported relief in 92% of cases, with high degrees of effectiveness and ease of use

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS HEALTH SCIENCE CENTER AT SAN ANTONIO

Research News

 

IMAGE: THE FORCED INSPIRATORY SUCTION AND SWALLOW TOOL, SHOWN HERE, IS DESIGNED TO STOP HICCUPS ON ONE OR TWO ATTEMPTS. IT WAS DEVELOPED AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS HEALTH SCIENCE CENTER... view more 

CREDIT: FIGURE COURTESY OF JAMA NETWORK OPEN

SAN ANTONIO (June 18, 2021) -- Researchers from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio) and colleagues worldwide describe a new science-based intervention for hiccups in a research letter published June 18 in the journal JAMA Network Open.

In the publication, the scientists coined a new term for the intervention: the "forced inspiratory suction and swallow tool," or FISST. The team also reported the results of a survey of 249 users who were asked whether it is superior to hiccup home remedies such as breathing into a paper bag.

The need

"Hiccups are occasionally annoying for some people, but for others they significantly impact quality of life," said Ali Seifi, MD, associate professor of neurosurgery in UT Health San Antonio's Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine. "This includes many patients with brain and stroke injury, and cancer patients. We had a couple of cancer patients in this study. Some chemotherapies cause hiccups."

Simple tool

FISST is a rigid drinking tube with an inlet valve that requires forceful suction to draw water from a cup into the mouth. The suction and swallow simultaneously stimulate two nerves, the phrenic and vagus nerves, to relieve hiccups.

Forceful suction induces the diaphragm, a sheaf of muscle that inflates the lungs during breathing, to contract. The suction and swallow also prompt the epiglottis, a flap that covers the windpipe during swallowing, to close. This ends the hiccup spasms.

User feedback

FISST stopped hiccups in nearly 92% of cases, users self-reported. In terms of satisfaction, 226 of 249 participants (90.8%) affirmatively answered questions about whether they found the tool easy to use.

On a different measure, subjective effectiveness, 183 of 203 participants (90.1%) indicated that FISST was effective when they used it. Fewer participants answered this question, possibly because it was last in the survey, Dr. Seifi said.

The tool, developed at UT Health San Antonio by Dr. Seifi with input from medical students, is being marketed by a Colorado company under a license agreement with the university and has been accepted by a major supermarket chain to be placed on shelves, Dr. Seifi said.

About the study

The research project began with 600 individuals who, because they stated they had hiccups, received FISST. Of this population, 290 persons responded to a survey about their experience with using the device, compared to other remedies they have used. Of them, 249 fully answered the survey and were included in the research analysis.

The scale was 1 to 5, with 5 meaning the respondents were very happy with FISST and 1 meaning that they preferred to use home remedies.

The respondents were primarily adults over 18 (70%) and were half female and half male. Nearly 80% of the respondents were white.

As far as frequency of hiccups, 69% reported having them at least once a month, and most cases (65%) were transient, less than two hours in duration.

Clinical trial is goal

Future directions include conducting a double-blind clinical trial in Europe and America that gives FISST to one group of trial enrollees and a non-functional, sham device to another group. The challenge is developing something that resembles FISST but doesn't work, Dr. Seifi said.

###

Evaluation of the Forced Inspiratory Suction and Swallow Tool to Stop Hiccups

James Alvarez, MD; Jane Margaret Anderson, BSA; Patrick Larry Snyder, MD; Alireza Mirahmadizadeh, MD, MPH, PhD; Daniel Agustin Godoy, MD; Mark Fox, MD, MA; Ali Seifi, MD, FNCS

First published: June 18, 2021, JAMA Network Open

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2781196

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Animals' ability to adapt their habitats key to survival amid climate change

UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING

Research News

 

IMAGE: MICHAEL DILLON (LEFT), AN ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING DEPARTMENT OF ZOOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY, AND ARTHUR WOODS (RIGHT), A PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA,... view more 

CREDIT: SYLVAIN PINCEBOURDE

Birds build nests to keep eggs and baby nestlings warm during cool weather, but also make adjustments in nest insulation in such a way the little ones can keep cool in very hot conditions. Mammals, such as rabbits or groundhogs, sleep or hibernate in underground burrows that provide stable, moderate temperatures and avoid above-ground conditions that often are far more extreme outside the burrow.

Michael Dillon, an associate professor in the University of Wyoming Department of Zoology and Physiology, was part of a research group that examined animals' ability to respond to climate change likely depends on how well they modify their habitats, such as nests and burrows.

So, how are these animals doing? Are they succeeding, struggling, or are their efforts a mixed bag in adapting their habitats to climate change?

"One of the key reasons that we wrote this paper is that we don't know the answer to this very important question!," Dillon says. "We hope the paper will encourage scientists to begin answering this question."

Dillon is a co-author of a paper, titled "Extended Phenotypes: Buffers or Amplifiers of Climate Change?," that was published June 16 in Trends in Ecology & Evolution. The journal publishes commissioned, peer-reviewed articles in all areas of ecology and evolutionary science.

The lead author of the paper is Arthur Woods, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Montana. Other contributors to the paper were from the University of Tours in Tours, France; and Stellenbosch University in Stellenbosch, South Africa.

The study investigated extended phenotypes, which are modifications that organisms -- birds, insects and mammals -- make to their habitats.

"An extended phenotype can range from simply a hole in the ground occupied by an animal to leaves rolled into cavities by insects, to nests of all shapes and sizes built by birds and mammals, to termite mounds and bee colonies," Dillon says.

Extended phenotypes are important because they filter climate into local sets of conditions immediately around the organism. This is what biologists call the microclimate.

Because extended phenotypes are constructed structures, they often are modified in response to local climate variation and, potentially, in response to climate change. This process is called plasticity of the extended phenotype.

"One example might be a bird nest that is well insulated to protect eggs or young birds from cold. As climates warm, if the bird does not adjust insulation in the nest, it may, in fact, cause the young to overheat," Dillon explains.

In another prime example, termites build mounds that capture wind and solar energy to drive airflow through the colony, which stabilizes temperature, relative humidity and oxygen levels experienced by the colony.

However, the idea of microclimates is broader than constructed habitats. Microclimates typically differ substantially from nearby climates, which means that the climate in an area may provide little information about what animals experience in their microhabitats.

As an analogy, although a weather station might tell the public that the temperature in Laramie is 90 degrees Fahrenheit, simply by moving from the south to the north side of a building, one can experience microclimates that are strikingly different and often not captured by the weather data, Dillon says.

The same is true of animals of many different sizes. For example, a moose can move from an open sagebrush landscape to a shaded river corridor to cool off; a snake can move from its underground hole to a sunny rock to warm up; and a tiny insect shuttling between the top and bottom of a leaf can experience temperature differences of more than 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

"So, animals use microclimates, both by simply moving but also by building structures, such as nests, burrows, mounds and mines," Dillon says.

Across the globe, rising levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere are causing temperatures to rise and precipitation patterns to shift. For biologists, a key problem is to understand current effects of climate change on species, and to predict future effects, including how species' ranges may shift and what the relative risks of extinction are for different animal species' groups.

The research team favors a renewed effort to understand how extended phenotypes mediate how organisms experience climate change.

"We need a much better understanding of the basic biophysical principles by which extended phenotypes alter local conditions," says Sylvain Pincebourde, an ecologist in the Insect Biology Research Institute at the University of Tours and one of the paper's co-authors.

Another key challenge is to understand how much plasticity there is in extended phenotypes, and how much and how rapidly they can evolve.

"At this point, we pretty much have no idea," Dillon says. "Can structures that buffer temperature variability keep up with the pace of climate change?"

###

JUNETEENTH 

Blackologists and the Promise of Inclusive Sustainability

AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES

NEWS RELEASE 19-JUN-2021

Research News

 

Historically, shared resources such as forests, fishery stocks, and pasture lands have often been managed with an aim toward averting "tragedies of the commons," which are thought to result from selfish overuse. Writing in BioScience (https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/biosci/biab052), Drs. Senay Yitbarek (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Karen Bailey (University of Colorado Boulder), Nyeema Harris (University of Michigan), and colleagues critique this model, arguing that, all too often, such conservation has failed to acknowledge the complex socioecological interactions that undergird the health of resource pools.

The authors, who describe themselves as Blackologists ("'not simply scholars that are Black but, rather, are scholars who deliberately leverage and intersect Blackness into advancing knowledge production"), elucidate a model in which researchers' life experiences provide "unique perspectives to critically examine socioecological processes and the challenges and solutions that arise from them." Because "BIPOC (for Black, Indigenous, and people of color) scholars endure systemic racism and a suite of professional barriers," say the authors, they "have an empathy and relatability to indigenous communities all over the world that are challenged by simply the desire to preserve their culture and sacred ties to the environment."

Through this lens, the authors explain that some conservation frameworks, such as the use of "fortress conservation" that excludes local communities, "occur in regions of the world with high biodiversity (e.g., tropics) and where communities of Black and Brown people are struggling for subsistence and equality." Rather than meeting their goal of preserving resources for the public good, such tactics risk disadvantaging the very populations whose knowledge and values may be most valuable in ameliorating ecological degradation. In particular, say the authors, such "displacement with prohibition" hampers the delivery of conservation goals because it relies on often inadequate management by outsiders.

The authors argue for a holistic, collaborative management practice that fully accounts for complex human-environment dynamics: "In particular, overlooked feedbacks between social and ecological processes, often highlighted by our experiences as BIPOC scholars, may shed light on effective remediation of the tragedy." Through this interdisciplinary model, say the authors, "resource users, the nature and manifestation of conflict itself, and the roles of humans as both resource users and conflict mediators provide insights into the tragedy and into the ways it can be overcome."

The authors close with a call for greater inclusion and diversity within the sciences, stating that Blackologists' experiences provide a unique perspective crucial for addressing resource depletion across spatial and temporal scales: "As Blackologists, we argue that the marginalization of our identities across disciplines advances the very tragedy scientific communities hope to avert."

The article was published on 19 June in honor of Juneteenth, the 155-year-old holiday celebrating the emancipation of enslaved Black Americans in the United States.

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BioScience, published monthly by Oxford Journals, is the journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS). BioScience is a forum for integrating the life sciences that publishes commentary and peer-reviewed articles. The journal has been published since 1964. AIBS is an organization for professional scientific societies and organizations, and individuals, involved with biology. AIBS provides decision-makers with high-quality, vetted information for the advancement of biology and society. Follow BioScience on Twitter @AIBSbiology.

Oxford Journals is a division of Oxford University Press. Oxford Journals publishes well over 300 academic and research journals covering a broad range of subject areas, two-thirds of which are published in collaboration with learned societies and other international organizations. The division has been publishing journals for more than a century, and as part of the world's oldest and largest university press, has more than 500 years of publishing expertise behind it. Follow Oxford Journals on Twitter @OxfordJournals.

Soils from Antarctica seem to contain no life—something that's never been found

For the first time, scientists have found soils on the Earth’s surface that appear to harbor no life at all. The soils came from two windswept, rocky ridges in the interior of Antarctica, 300 miles from the South Pole, where mountains poke through ice that is thousands of feet thick.

© Photograph by Noah Fierer two individuals from the soil research team heading out to sample soils from one of the sites in the Shackleton Glacier region

”The assumption has always been that microbes are tough, they can live anywhere,” says Noah Fierer, a microbial ecologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, whose team studied the soils. Single-celled organisms have, after all, been found living in hydrothermal vents over 200 degrees Fahrenheit, alive in lakes trapped beneath half a mile of ice in Antarctica, and even surviving 120,000 feet up in the Earth’s stratosphere. But after a year of trying, Fierer and his PhD student Nicholas Dragone still have not found any signs of life in some of the Antarctic soils they collected.

Fierer and Dragone studied soils from 11 different mountains, representing a wide range of conditions. Those from the lower, less frigid mountains contained bacteria and fungi; but in some of those from the two highest, driest, and coldest mountains, no signs of life stirred.

“We can’t say they’re sterile,” says Fierer. Microbiologists are used to finding millions of cells in a teaspoon of soil; so a minuscule number—say, 100 living cells—could potentially escape detection. “But as far as we can tell, they don’t harbor any microbial life.”

Looking for signs of life

Whether some of the soils are truly lifeless, or later turn out to harbor a few surviving cells, this new discovery—recently published in the journal JGR Biogeosciences—could help guide efforts to find life on Mars. The Antarctic soils are perpetually frozen, saturated in toxic salts, and have not tasted appreciable amounts of liquid water for up to two million years—similar to Martian soils.

They were collected during a January 2018 expedition, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, to a remote section of the Transantarctic Mountains. Those cut through the continent’s interior, separating the high polar plateau in the east from the low-lying ice of the west. Scientists camped on Shackleton Glacier, a 60-mile-long conveyor belt of ice that spills down through a gap in the mountains. They used a helicopter to reach the heights and collect samples up and down the glacier.

On the warmer, wetter mountains at the foot of the glacier, just a few hundred feet above sea level, they found soils inhabited by animals smaller than sesame seeds: microscopic worms, eight-legged tardigrades, whiskered rotifers, and wingless insects called springtails. These bare, sandy soils harbored less than one-thousandth the number of bacteria that you’d find in a well-tended lawn —just enough to provide food for the tiny grazing beasts lurking beneath the surface.

But as the team visited higher mountains farther up the glacier, these signs of life gradually dwindled. At the top end of the glacier they visited two mountains—Schroeder Hill and Roberts Massif—which rise more than 7,000 feet above sea level.

The visit to Schroeder Hill was brutal, recalls Byron Adams, a biologist from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, who led the project. The temperature on this midsummer day was near 0°F. Screaming winds—which slowly evaporate the snow and ice, keeping the mountains bare—constantly threatened to lift and toss the garden shovel that they’d brought to dig in the sand. The ground was strewn with reddish volcanic rocks, pitted and polished from eons of wind scour.

As the scientists lifted rocks, they found their undersides crusted in white salts—toxic crystals of perchlorates, chlorates, and nitrates. Perchlorates and chlorates are caustic, reactive salts used in rocket fuels and industrial bleaches—and also abundant on the surface of Mars. The salts had accumulated on these parched Antarctic mountains because there was no water to wash them away.

“It felt like sampling on Mars,” says Adams. When you thrust the shovel in, “you know you’re the first thing to disturb that soil in forever—maybe millions of years.”

Video: Polar vortex encapsulates Antarctica as a 130°C global temperature difference emerged (The Weather Network)


The researchers assumed that even in these highest, harshest places, they would still find a few live microbes hunkered down in the soil. But that expectation started to crumble in late 2018, as Dragone used a method called polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to detect microbial DNA in the dirt. Dragone tested 204 samples from mountains up and down the glacier. Those from the lower, less frigid mountains yielded plentiful DNA; but a huge portion of the samples from the higher elevations—20 percent— including most of the ones from Schroeder Hill and Roberts Massif, yielded absolutely nothing, suggesting that they contained vanishingly few microbes—or perhaps none at all.

“When he first started showing me some of the results, I’m like, ‘something’s wrong’,” says Fierer. He figured there must be a problem with the samples, or the lab equipment.

Dragone followed up with a battery of additional experiments looking for signs of life. He incubated the soils with glucose, to see if something living in the soils converted it into carbon dioxide. He tried to detect a chemical called ATP, which all life on Earth uses to store energy. And for months, he incubated bits of soil in a variety of nutrient cocktails, trying to coax any microbes present to grow into colonies.

“Nick threw the kitchen sink at these samples,” says Fierer. Despite all of those tests, he still found nothing in some of the soils. “That was really surprising.”
Is there really no life in the soil?

Jacqueline Goordial, an environmental microbiologist at the University of Guelph in Canada, finds the results “tantalizing”—especially Dragone’s efforts to determine what factors influenced the likelihood of finding microbes at a given site. He found that high elevation and high levels of chlorate salts were the strongest predictors of no detectable life. “That’s a really interesting discovery,” says Goordial. “It tells us a lot about the limits of life on Earth.”

She isn’t entirely convinced that their soils are truly devoid of life—in part because of her own experience in another part of Antarctica.

Several years ago she studied soils from a similar environment in the Transantarctic Mountains—a place 500 miles northwest of Shackleton Glacier, called University Valley, which probably hasn’t seen significant moisture or thawing temperatures for 120,000 years. These soils showed no signs of life when she incubated them for 20 months at 23°F—a typical summer temperature in that valley. But when she warmed the soil samples a few degrees above freezing, several of them showed bacterial growth.

Whether these soils are devoid of life depends on how you define it.

Scientists have, for example, found bacterial cells still alive after being trapped for thousands of years in glacial ice. While they’re trapped, the cells may slow their metabolism by a million-fold. They enter a state in which they no longer grow; they do nothing other than repairing the trickle of DNA damage that they experience from cosmic rays that penetrate the ice. Goordial speculates that these “slow survivors” may be what she detected in University Valley—and she suspects that if Dragone and Fierer analyzed 10 times more soil, they might also find them at Roberts Massif or Schroeder Hill.

Helping to look for life on Mars

Brent Christner, who studies Antarctic microbes at the University of Florida in Gainesville, believes these high, dry soils could help to refine the search for life on Mars.

He points out that the Viking I and II probes, which landed on Mars in 1976, carried life detection experiments that were based, in part, on studies of low-lying soils near the Antarctic coast—a region called the Dry Valleys. Some of those soils become damp with melt water during the summer. They harbor not only microbes—but in some places, tiny worms and other animals as well.

By comparison, the higher, drier soils of Roberts Massif and Schroeder Hill might be a better proving ground for Mars-bound instruments.

“The top surface layers of Mars are awful,” says Christner. “We don’t have an organism on Earth that could survive on the surface”—at least not in the top inch or two. Any spacecraft going there to look for life should be prepared in the nastiest place that Earth has to offer

Douglas Fox

BC
Global News

Ocean sighting of North Pacific Right Whale off Haida Gwaii generates major excitement

Duration: 01:59 
Marine biologists have spotted a critically-endangered Right Whale of the coast of Haida Gwaii, only the fourth sighting in B.C. waters in seven decades. Paul Johnson has the story, and the incredible pictures.

Outrage over post depicting residential school children 'having an absolute blast'

Video Duration: 02:02 

An Indigenous leader from Edmonton is outraged over a social media post about residential school children. But as Chris Chacon explains, it's about who made the post — not just what it says.

How Canada's UNDRIP bill was strengthened to reject 'racist' doctrine of discovery


OTTAWA — When European explorers first set foot on the lands that are now Canada, they claimed the territory as their own, despite the presence of Indigenous Peoples who had already been occupying the lands for generations.

 

 Provided by The Canadian Press

They did this using the "doctrine of discovery," a policy originally emanating from decrees issued by the pope in the 15th century authorizing Christian explorers to claim so-called "terra nullius," or vacant lands, based on the notion they had racial and religious superiority.

This doctrine has since been repudiated by many official bodies, including many faith organizations.

Now, a new landmark piece of legislation will see the Canadian government overtly reject the doctrines of discovery and terra nullius as "racist, scientifically false, legally invalid, morally condemnable and socially unjust."

This language is found in Bill C-15, which passed in the Senate earlier this week. The law aims to harmonize Canada’s laws with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

But the addition of this potent rejection in the soon-to-be proclaimed law was not initially part of the legislation when first tabled in Parliament in late 2020.

It was added later, after Indigenous leaders and First Nations chiefs pressed the Liberal government to strengthen the original wording that simply rejected colonial doctrines more generally.

Justice Minister David Lametti, who spent 20 years teaching property law before entering politics, says he spent years "preaching" to his students about how these doctrines were "colonialist and destructive."

"So it was really a real personal pleasure for me, when Indigenous leadership suggested it, we said, 'Oh yeah, we'd love to do that,'" Lametti told The Canadian Press in a recent interview.

"It is important that we inject that into the narrative that these doctrines have no force whatsoever, no explanatory force, no legal force and no moral force, quite frankly, quite the opposite and they need to be explicitly rejected."

On Friday, Lametti and Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett joined leaders from Canada's national Indigenous organizations: National Chief Perry Bellegarde of the Assembly of First Nations, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami President Natan Obed and Metis National Council vice-president David Chartrand for a solemn ceremony marking the passage of Canada's UNDRIP bill.

"This is a very historic moment today," Bellegarde said during the ceremony.

He stressed the importance of the UN declaration in recognizing the inherent and treaty rights of First Nations in Canada and that the government's adoption of it into law is a noteworthy milestone.

"This bill is a powerful tool for building a better relationship with Canada in which those rights, our rights, must be respected and upheld and implemented. And it is part of our road map to reconciliation in this country," Bellegarde said.

The inclusion of a strong repudiation of the doctrines of discovery and terra nullius were important to include and specifically delineate in the legislation because it was those doctrines that the European settlers used to try to eliminate Indigenous rights and subjugate First Peoples, he explained.

Those colonialist ideologies are what eventually led to the creation of the residential school system, disputes about land claims and resource development rights and ongoing systemic racism within many of Canada's institutions.

"Those two doctrines are fast becoming, not only in Canada but globally, (seen) as illegal and racist doctrines. So to have them mentioned in there is very powerful. It's about decolonizing Canada's laws and policies," Bellegarde said.

"It will have a huge impact. It's always about peaceful coexistence and mutual respect and sharing this great this great land and sharing these resources. We've never surrendered or given up anything, and that's fundamental to this going forward."

Another addition to the bill that came after it was tabled in Parliament was a strengthening of language that recognizes the protection of Aboriginal treaty rights under the Canadian Constitution. Wording was added to say that "Canadian courts have stated that such rights are not frozen and are capable of evolution and growth."

Chief Wilton 'willie' Littlechild, a former Conservative MP who was part of a team of human rights and legal experts who took part in a 1977 Indigenous delegation to the United Nations that helped to push for and later draft the 2007 declaration, was instrumental in getting these passages into the legislation's preamble.

He says it was of utmost importance for him personally to see this enshrined in Canada's UNDRIP law because fighting for recognition and respect of Canada's treaties with First Nations was the reason his people in Maskwacis, Alberta tasked him with going to the global community, seeking an international declaration of their rights over 40 years ago.

"It was treaty violations in August 1977 and their concerns about the daily violations of our treaties that they wanted me to go back to the international arena to remind the world," Littlechild said.

"So treaties, or violations of our sacred agreements, is why I went there and we proposed solutions, one of which is the very legislation we're talking about today."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 19, 2021.

Teresa Wright, The Canadian Press

How America quietly lost 2,700 ships

rpremack@businessinsider.com (Rachel Premack)

© Provided by Business Insider Farewell, sweet ships... AP Photo/Seth Wenig

Since 1960, America's cargo fleet has fallen from 16% of the world's fleet to 0.2%.

It's thanks to the government slashing support of shipping, and the rise of overseas tax havens.

Our domestic snubbing of shipping underlies why we're in a shipping crisis.

At the time ocean shipping took over the world, America gave up on the shipping industry.

In 1960, when the world moved 1.2 million tons of goods via ship, the American fleet comprised 16% of the world's total cargo shipping power. By 2019, global trade shot up to 10.7 million tons - but America's domestic carriers are moving just a sliver of it. The US Merchant Marine now makes up just 0.2% of the world's vessels.

Meanwhile, the US consumes the most goods moved by shipping container of any country - which is how lawn chairs, yoga mats, and basically everything else you buy moves from factories in Asia to stores in North America and Europe. (I'll be focusing on containerized shipping in this piece. The two other major types are bulk shipping, which moves raw goods like iron ore, and tankers, which moves oil.)

The shipping crisis has been the talk of 2021. Unprecedented trade volumes has sent freight prices to record highs, as I wrote about last week. And as fraught ocean supply chains hamper Americans' access to, say, life-saving electric generators or surgical masks, consumers are dependent on a trade network entirely out of their control.


Two big reasons explain why American fleets have nearly vanished:

Lack of government investment into shipping

A loophole that lets shipowners register vessels abroad

Our shipping building empire of yore

Shipping is not as lucrative as you think. Ships have to be at least 90% full to turn a profit. Management consulting giant McKinsey bristled at the industry in a 2014 report, calling it "highly unprofitable" and "exceptionally volatile."

It's always been like this. That's why, in the 20th century, major seafarers like the United Kingdom subsidized the building and operations of their cargo lines.

To understand how shipping has changed in the past 100 years, I chatted with two experts. One is maritime historian Salvatore Mercogliano, who was in the merchant marine before he entered academia. The other is John D. McCown, who has three decades of experience operating and investing in container shipping. He recently published a shipping history called "Giants of the Sea."

In the early 1900s, the United States was heavily dependent on the cargo fleets of Germany and the UK. But constant warring had those European ships otherwise engaged. So America began developing its own major ocean carriers.

© Bettmann / Contributor Californians building Liberty vessels galore in 1941. 

In 1936, Congress established the US Maritime Commission. It was charged with building a fresh fleet of government-funded merchant ships - and was appropriated at least $1 billion (in 2021 dollars) each year to do so. In the commission's annual reports, officials argued such a fleet was crucial to the country's national defense.

The commission planned to furnish 500 ships over the course of 10 years. Instead, it built a whopping 5,777 ships from late 1930s until 1950 - "more ships than were really needed," as McCown put it. Some were sold off to other countries or were destroyed in the war, but many became our very own cargo ships.
Bye-bye federal bucks

Many of the ships that comprised America's fleet of 2,926 came from that effort from the US Maritime Commission. They were intended to support America's wartime efforts. After the end of World War II, this massive fleet just started moving our regular ol' peacetime stuff.

Those ships would not be replaced with the same vigor that furnished them. The Maritime Commission was disbanded in 1950.

Commissioners wrote in an annual report in 1949 that they envisioned an American cargo fleet run by private enterprise that could mostly stand without government support. Mirroring its overall ascendance, the US was becoming a shipping superpower; an American businessman named Malcom McLean would even invent containerized shipping in 1954, arguably the largest advancement in ocean trade since humankind invented the boat.

But these bureaucrats knew that it was unusually expensive to build or operate ships in the US.

They decided, then, to dole out government subsidies in another way. There were two programs: the operating differential subsidy (ODS) and the construction differential subsidy (CDS). Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, taxpayers were spending billions per year to support the building and operating of American ships.

A couple canoodles near the Port of Los Angeles circa 2004. I wonder if they were thinking about the curtailing of federal subsidies to US shipbuilders and operators... Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

It wasn't enough to maintain the fleet that Americans built during the Second World War. From 1960 to 1980, our domestic cargo fleet shrank by 2,062, from 2,926 to 864, according to the Department of Transportation.

America's new role as a "thought leader," rather than active manufacturer and operator, in shipping was sealed in the early 1980s, McCown said. That's when, under the Reagan administration, the government stopped writing new contracts to subsidize American maritime giants.

Predictably, America's two biggest cargo carriers began pulling out of the US by the next decade. Maersk, a Danish carrier, acquired one, while French carrier CMA CGM acquired the other.

The 'flag of convenience' loophole

Where did these ships go? The new behemoths may shock you: Panama, Liberia, and the Marshall Islands.

Those three countries have the most ships by deadweight tonnage registered with their flags. It's thanks to a trick in which a ship may be owned and operated by one group, but registered in another country. About three-quarters of ships are registered in a country separate from where they're owned.

German shipping giant Hapag-Lloyd, for instance, operates the ship Afif, which is owned by a company based in the United Arab Emirates. But Afif flies under the Marshall Islands flag.

© Shilo Watts/Getty A beach in the Marshall Islands, where I believe I need to take a reporting trip soon to better understand the shipping crisis. 

Countries like the Marshall Islands have an "open registry" in which anyone can register their vessel there, sometimes called a "flag of convenience."

And boy, is it convenient!

The reason for this complexity is, of course, that it saves money. Registering your ship in, say, Panama means you can hire cheaper labor, deal with fewer pesky safety regulations, and avoid income taxes altogether.

Mercogliano said the open registry trend, which began after World War II, was a major slam to American shipping power.

"None of the big shipping companies are American anymore," Mercogliano said. "Basically, everything shifted overseas. And at the same time that we see our fleet decreasing, global trade has increased tremendously."
How the wimpy American fleet points to the shipping crisis

Even if there were more American ships, we would still have a global crisis. China, South Korea, and Germany, all of which have strong ocean carriers, are also experiencing the congestion that's striking US ports.

Still, some say the lack of American presence in shipping, particularly at our own ports, could be harmful. The federal government launched an investigation last fall into allegations that foreign-owned shipping companies are refusing to carry containers loaded with American agricultural goods - instead preferring to move empty containers, which have a shorter turnaround time.

"The control is outside of US control, it's in the hands of these other companies," Mercogliano said. "Now I'm not saying it's nefarious or conspiratorial, but they have different interests."

It's clear that our government has turned away from its 20th century concept that a robust shipping industry is critical for a strong nation. A 2017 report noted that America's ports mostly compete for state and local funding, rather than federal - a far cry from our previous obsession with funding domestic shipping.

A man unloads American logs from a cargo ship in Osaka, Japan in 1983. This predates the lumber shortage. Gary Braasch/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images

And that shift has unfortunately coincided with an upswing in trade - from 1979 to 2019, global cargo trade has increased by nearly threefold. Ships, which have increased in average size by five-fold since 1990, are becoming too big to dock at some of these ports.

The elevated demand for stuff we've seen this year, coupled with our inability to process an upswing in trade, is causing this year's shipping crisis - which is estimated to stretch into 2022, causing shortages and price upticks along the way.

Infrastructure improvements aren't sexy. But if bringing American shipping into the 21st century means we can avoid shortages of "just about everything," we better cozy up to them.

 rpremack@insider.com.
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